Samsung shines the spotlight on the new 8-core Galaxy S 4

Call from global LTE frequencies, scroll by tilting.

Samsung unveiled the Galaxy S 4, the next in its line of popular Galaxy series Android handsets, at a theatrical event this evening at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.

The Android handset looks similar to its predecessor, right down to the rounded edges, curved body, and plastic chassis, not to mention that signature Home button. It is 136mm long, 69mm wide, 7.9mm thin, and it weighs 130 grams—taller, thinner, and lighter than the Galaxy S III. It comes with a 5-inch AMOLED display with a 1080p resolution. All of this is powered up by a 2,600 mAh battery.

The flagship model's SOC will be an eight-core Samsung Exynos 5, which uses ARM's big.LITTLE technology to meld together four fast CPU cores with four slower but more power-efficient cores and seamlessly switches between them. However, not all markets will get the Exynos-equipped phone. The alternate SOC choice is a 1.9GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro.

The Galaxy S 4 runs Android 4.2 Jelly Bean and has 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage with an added expansion slot. It features Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.0, and infrared LED, which can control your television with the WatchOn app. Depending on the market, the Galaxy S 4 will have wireless charging capabilities.

The new Android handset comes with a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 2MP front-facing camera with their own new features. Users can now attach audio to photos, adding "another dimension of detail to the visual memory to be created." The Galaxy S 4 also features a dual-camera view that allows users to take photos with both the front- and rear-facing cameras at the same time. The camera has an "eraser," which lets you erase people (like photo-bombers) out of photos.

Samsung's proprietary Touchwiz interface is also getting a bit of a boost. With Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, Samsung will tack on features like the Daydream screensaver functionality and lock screen widgets. The Galaxy S 4 will include a significant upgrade to its S-Voice digital assistant functionality, like S Voice Drive, which will feature bigger font sizes and more text-to-speech, as well as the ability to respond to a message hands-free. Samsung has also introduced S Translator, which translates messages in nine languages, including French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Samsung promises that the phone will let us live "without boundaries." Users will be able to perform "Air Gestures" by hovering their fingers above the handset for a Galaxy Note II S-pen-like effect. There is an "Air View" function that lets users hover a finger over things like a date to see additional information—yet another feature borrowed from the Note. The handset will be able to connect to the Samsung's HomeSync, a personal cloud device with 1TB of space; it can stream to any smartphone, TV, tablet, or computer. That content can be mirrored on the Galaxy S 4.

Before its debut, the new handset was rumored to include an eye-tracking technology called Smart Scroll, which uses the front-facing camera to follow along as the user's eyes moves through content on the screen. The feature was removed or altered before launch and now uses a tilting method to help with this scrolling functionality. It will rely on facial recognition and the physical tilt of the device to function. The Galaxy S 4 will also include Smart Pause, which pauses video if it recognizes that the user is no longer watching what is currently playing on screen.

For the business-centric, the Galaxy S 4 features "KNOX," a mobile device management technology that lets you keep work and play separate, like BlackBerry Balance. And like BlackBerry's BES 10, companies can manage different programs and apps on the "business" side of the phone without reaching into a user's personal data.

Finally, Samsung introduced S Health, which acts as a personal pedometer and fitness coach of sorts. The app features temperature and humidity sensors to detect surroundings during a workout session, and users can input how much they eat and sleep. In addition, a companion wrist band called the S Band will track information, much like the Fitbit.

The Samsung Galaxy S 4 will be available in the second quarter of this year, and the company plans to launch it to over 357 global mobile operators. It will support up to six global LTE networks and frequencies ("Hexa band" support"), depending on the market.

That's the point of these multiple cores, though. Some of them are low power cores that are utilized to save battery power. It's not an typical 8 core scenario. The other 4 cores are there to specifically save battery.

I'm at an utter loss as to why anyone would need 8 cores on a mobile device. This isn't the whole "oh, 640 KB should be enough for everyone - Bill Gates" bit, this is just seriously ridiculous.

I know we still have to see the rest of the phone, and I get it. I just wish the focus wasn't so much on ferocious power and more about battery life.

Samsung already has a winner with the Galaxy line (and this is coming from a die-hard HTC fan). I'd be really sad to see this phone suffer in the battery department because of this chip.

More cores generally means better battery life. If the entire power draw of the processor doesn't double, being able to use just one core on an 8 core processor will be more battery efficient than a 4 core processor using one core.

Also, it looks like the processor is using ARM's big.LITTLE architecture, so there are a mix of cores -- 4 fast cores for intensive applications and 4 more energy efficient cores for easier tasks.

This really sounds like number boasting to me. Adding cores beyond what we already have will probably not increase performance because developers can't be bothered to use more than a handful. This is especially true on smartphones, where multitasking is not frequent (compared to computers).

Now if they had faster memory or higher instructions per clock cycles, that would be very helpful, but there's no details about that.

[EDIT] If you double the number of cores and divide each core's power by two, developers will still need to use more threads to get the same speed as before. I understand that each core might be faster or equal to what we had before today and still use less power, but I'll still root for a solution that doesn't require threading to get better performance.

That's the point of these multiple cores, though. Some of them are low power cores that are utilized to save battery power. It's not an typical 8 core scenario. The other 4 cores are there to specifically save battery.

Sure, but one problem I've had with all the focus on cores is that they don't really help with performance very much. It seems to me that one of the biggest bottlenecks in Android's performance that is rarely discussed is the speed of the flash memory. It's slow as balls on most phones and this is actually the cause of most lag when it comes to opening and switching between apps. Fix this and Android phones would fly.

As for the Galaxy S IV, well.. more of the same but bigger and faster (except you probably won't notice)! Yawn...

I know that English is meant to be fungible and a dynamic, living language. And I also know (or believe I know, which is all you need on the internet) that Apple was the one that started this marketing speak bullshit, but...

I'm at an utter loss as to why anyone would need 8 cores on a mobile device. This isn't the whole "oh, 640 KB should be enough for everyone - Bill Gates" bit, this is just seriously ridiculous.

I know we still have to see the rest of the phone, and I get it. I just wish the focus wasn't so much on ferocious power and more about battery life.

Samsung already has a winner with the Galaxy line (and this is coming from a die-hard HTC fan). I'd be really sad to see this phone suffer in the battery department because of this chip.

More cores generally means better battery life. If the entire power draw of the processor doesn't double, being able to use just one core on an 8 core processor will be more battery efficient than a 4 core processor using one core.

Also, it looks like the processor is using ARM's big.LITTLE architecture, so there are a mix of cores -- 4 fast cores for intensive applications and 4 more energy efficient cores for easier tasks.

Would have been nice if this is clarified in the article.

8 "regular" cores doesn't make sense for a phone, but in this configuration, should be a boost for battery life.

SIV doesn't seem super impressive so far, just a speed bump with some new software? It's like the S iOS revision.

I would be very curious to see an article/study on multiple core usage in mobile devices. Multi-CPU/core has been and continues to be the way of the future, but it does typically require more on the part of the developer to get it right (as a developer, although not on mobile devices, I can say this is usually true, though I believe some languages are designed around trying to take away that difficulty). As long as it is smart about powering off the unused cores and using the low-power cores as often as possible, I can't see that it hurts to have more cores, though.

That's the point of these multiple cores, though. Some of them are low power cores that are utilized to save battery power. It's not an typical 8 core scenario. The other 4 cores are there to specifically save battery.

Sure, but one problem I've had with all the focus on cores is that they don't really help with performance very much. It seems to me that one of the biggest bottlenecks in Android's performance that is rarely discussed is the speed of the flash memory. It's slow as balls on most phones and this is actually the cause of most lag when it comes to opening and switching between apps. Fix this and Android phones would fly.

As for the Galaxy S IV, well.. more of the same but bigger and faster (except you probably won't notice)! Yawn...

But android is embracing the split screen app modes, which could utilize the extra cores effectively.

Most people aren't going to notice this, but the people who are will love it.

\Begin{rant}8 cores is definitely a marketing headline. Many people i know with the S3 who are complete tech noobs always say to me "it's quad core" in response to "so what's so great about your phone?" And it irritates me because that says nothing about how good it is. The S3 feels so cheap and plasticky. I use a lumia 920 and although it is heavy, it feels so solidly built in comparison.\end{rant}

\Begin{rant}8 cores is definitely a marketing headline. Many people i know with the S3 who are complete tech noobs always say to me "it's quad core" in response to "so what's so great about your phone?" And it irritates me because that says nothing about how good it is. The S3 feels so cheap and plasticky. I use a lumia 920 and although it is heavy, it feels so solidly built in comparison.\end{rant}

Is there any user benefit to even 4 cores on a phone? With video decode and graphics acceleration in hardware, how often is a mobile app CPU-bound?

I suspect it's like the megapixel race in cameras, or the old Ghz race in CPUs, where consumers were mis-educated that more is better, so design decisions get made based on what's going to be written on the box rather than user experience.

But hey, seems like a nice enough phone. And it's the only way for most Android users to get an OS update, and that's worth something right there.

Given my lackluster experience with the Samsung software extras, I am leery of all the software features they are pushing. Some sound interesting if they work as advertised, but I have my doubts they will.

I know that English is meant to be fungible and a dynamic, living language. And I also know (or believe I know, which is all you need on the internet) that Apple was the one that started this marketing speak bullshit, but...

Give me the basics, not fancy stuff that people will get bored of after a few hours.

I don't even have anyone to tap pictures with with my S3.

Edit:

Huh, people seem to be neutral about my post.

If I seemed a bit sarcastic or "waah too many useless features" I didn't quite mean that, I simply mean that I would rather see current issues in the S3 addressed first before going on about features that may be revolutionary or another gimmick for the phone.

I could be completely wrong about the S4's eye tracking and what not, they could be the next big hit. I don't see it as likely at this moment and would much rather prefer something as basic as 2 times longer battery life. Not very conducive for marketing but it'd be a nice hint for current owners to upgrade.

I'm at an utter loss as to why anyone would need 8 cores on a mobile device. This isn't the whole "oh, 640 KB should be enough for everyone - Bill Gates" bit, this is just seriously ridiculous.

I know we still have to see the rest of the phone, and I get it. I just wish the focus wasn't so much on ferocious power and more about battery life.

Samsung already has a winner with the Galaxy line (and this is coming from a die-hard HTC fan). I'd be really sad to see this phone suffer in the battery department because of this chip.

More cores generally means better battery life. If the entire power draw of the processor doesn't double, being able to use just one core on an 8 core processor will be more battery efficient than a 4 core processor using one core.

Also, it looks like the processor is using ARM's big.LITTLE architecture, so there are a mix of cores -- 4 fast cores for intensive applications and 4 more energy efficient cores for easier tasks.

Did HTC's dreams of increased market share with the One just go down the drain?

If nothing else, I hope the fact this will sell like gangbusters will spur developers to change the way they scale fonts and graphics. I'm on a Droid DNA and a few apps are difficult to use because buttons, graphics and text are impossibly small on its 1080p screen. *glares at Waze*

For the most part I like the look of this, but I wonder if the screen size has gotten to a point where it'll cannibalise Galaxy Note sales. I kind of feel that the SGS2 with a 4.3" screen was the right size for the majority of people and that the Note covered those that wanted a big-ass screen. Then again, the SGS3 had a 4.8" screen and sold a staggering amount of units, whilst the Note sold millions as well, so what do I know.

cecilroytoo wrote:

MAFIAAfire wrote:

This just in... a certain fruit company pooped a ton of bricks!

Why? They still have the best hardware running highly optimised cores they designed themselves. Plus, no comical blueish tinge on the screen.

Wuh? How exactly do they have the best hardware? There are phones with better cameras, screens, speakers and radios out there, not to mention phones with faster processors, more memory, bigger storage and longer battery life. And if you mean in construction, I'll take an aluminium unibody with no death-grip issues over glass any day.

I'm not saying phone X is better than an iPhone, because it is all relative to what you like. But the iPhone is not the most cutting edge hardware and that makes the assertion that Apple have the best hardware rather weak indeed.

Florence Ion / Florence was a former Reviews Editor at Ars, with a focus on Android, gadgets, and essential gear. She received a degree in journalism from San Francisco State University and lives in the Bay Area.